The present invention is directed to a driving game with automatically controlled cars and more specifically to a game having a video output display where a player operates manual controls to compete against the automatically controlled cars or alternatively to control their speeds.
Several video driving games are now being sold including those manufactured by the present assignee. However, these all include a track layout where several driver controlled cars compete with each other. At the present time there is no driving game with effective and realistic and automatic traffic. There are some driving games with simulated traffic where, for example, the player controlled car will move down a simulated highway while trying to avoid other cars which are automatically controlled. However, these automatic cars have a fixed orientation and repetitive motion and do not provide a realistic simulation of a closed loop track.
One obvious solution to the foregoing is, of course, a brute force technique where a specific track or course for each automatically controlled car is laid out in total detail in computer memory. Where serveral automatically controlled cars with nonidentical paths are desired this is prohibitively expensive since each unique path would need a separate set of data; this requires a large amount of memory. More importantly, fixed and predetermined courses for these cars are not realistic. This is especially true in the simulation of a mechanical slotted racetrack car game where skidding off the track due to excessive speed is a quintessential part of the game.
Finally, if it is desired to switch to different track layouts the brute force system does not easily facilitate such track changes.